


Bits

by Lemon_Lemmings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Character Study, Gen, Hunk (Voltron)-centric, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Light Angst, Maybe - Freeform, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 05:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13943826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemon_Lemmings/pseuds/Lemon_Lemmings
Summary: Violence is an acquired taste that Hunk inevitably accommodates.





	Bits

**Author's Note:**

> More like a drabble sequence than a story? I like when the cute, friendly ones have berserker potential.

Hunk steps on the throat of the Galra soldier beneath him with a precarious pressure. He allows him breath, but only just.

For now.

The impulse to stomp down until the soldier’s windpipe is crushed is ugly and wretched, but it flashes through him, undeniable when he glances back to Lance and Pidge.

They’re both injured, though Pidge seems a little worse off. One of her eyes is as swollen and purple as a plum at the peak of ripeness. A nasty hole in her cheek pours buckets of blood. Lance practically cradles her face to stall the bleeding even as his own blood leaks into his eyes from the wound under his hairline, one trickle parting into two around the bridge of his nose.

Yeah, that was way too close. Hunk wants to stomp the shit out of this asshole, this walking piece of filth that nearly killed his friends.

Pidge lets out a pained whimper and as Lance consolingly shushes her, all he can do is restrain himself, increasing the pressure only slightly as he bends down.

The blaster that shot the chunk out of Pidge's cheek lies a few lengths away from the Galra’s right side, his arm stretched as though he still thinks he can reach it. Hunk lifts it by the hand, standing straight and squaring his shoulders.

“This your trigger finger?” he asks, so calm as he separates it that he almost startles himself.

The soldier simply sneers up at him, lip curled like a beast bearing its teeth.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Hunk bends his finger back until it snaps.

The sneer turns to a yelp and Hunk bends back the one adjacent, then the next, snapping fingers like toothpicks. When those are all broken, he grips the soldier’s hand tight and twists, the sound of crepitus rising in the air when he meets resistance.

But Galra bones are made of titanium no more than the bones that make up Hunk’s own skeleton. The wrist too, cracks like an eggshell in his unrelenting grasp. He discards the crooked hand, the Galra soldier letting out a feeble groan of a noise as his arm hits the dirt.

Hunk glances back to find his friends staring at him. Those eyes have questions that Hunk doesn’t care to answer, so he asks one instead.

“You guys okay?”

“Mostly,” Lance answers. “I think.”

Pidge only nods. Speaking would certainly reopen her cheek wound and that’s exactly why broken bones are a testament to his mercy.

* * *

“No,” Allura says, sharp and clear despite the trace of uncertainty Hunk picks from the unfolding and re-folding of her hands, the brief scrape of her top teeth over her bottom lip.

“Yes!” Shiro demands so fiercely his voice shakes. “We have no idea what kind of danger Keith could be in! We have to do whatever we can to find him and we have to do it as soon as possible!”

“We can find him without resorting to the methods of monsters,” Allura insists, her shoulders tensing. “I’m worried about him too but there are things we must always oppose, levels we cannot allow ourselves to stoop to.”

“I’m with Shiro,” Hunk says, tossing a glance to their detained prisoner, a Galra commander and a potential lead to finding Keith and the other Blade of Marmora who didn’t return from their mission.

Lance’s mouth falls open silently and if Hunk had time to think about things other than how imperative it is to find Keith and those other Blade members alive, he’d be unnerved by the way his friend’s gawking seems to accuse him of being a stranger.

“This isn’t just about what kinds of lines we’re willing to cross,” Pidge breaks in, her arms folded. “Torture is proven to bring out unreliable information. This guy could feed us a bunch of phony BS and waste time we could be using to actually find Keith. Torture isn’t just wrong, it’s a bad tactic.”

“We don’t have anything else to go on,” Shiro declares, solidly convinced. “He’s our only lead.”

“But we don’t have to torture him,” Pidge says, fidgety and pale with apprehension. “We can use the memory extraction procedure that we used on Sendak.”

“No,” Shiro dismisses immediately. “It would take too long and we’d run the risk of corrupting the castle.”

“We can’t run the risk of losing Keith while we follow a false lead,” Allura counters.

“You and me could build a lie detector,” Hunk says, glancing to Pidge. Even lie detectors aren’t as reliable as would be ideal, but far less ideal would be Keith winding up dead because they passed up unlocking information at their disposal, whatever the means of acquiring it.

Keith is more important.

The look Pidge gives him is a wary one but Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder, a touch of gratitude for the support.

“None of us want to do this but it’s our only option.” His voice leaves no room for argument.

**…**

Coran performs the majority of the interrogation and Hunk doesn't find himself even slightly surprised. Coran’s always had a cryptic kind of poker face, the kind that expresses anything but, and well, Hunk supposes he's always been good at picking up on stuff like that.

Their prisoner spits out what they need to know before he loses every tooth, but not without setting off Team Punk’s lie detector with fake intel the first couple tries.

Hunk isn’t sure what’s going to stick with him longer, hearing the agonized screams or watching the deftness with which Coran deposited teeth on the tray.

* * *

“Hunk, you can stop!”

But he can’t. His heart’s racing and he’s running on the autopilot of adrenaline, fists a frenzied flurry as he pounds into a violet face.

“Hunk, she’s done! She’s not getting up!”

He ceases at the touch between his shoulder blades, going rigid.

“You can stop,” Keith repeats. “She’s done and so is our mission, we can go.”

Hunk looks down at the Galra general he’s straddling. Blood streams from her dented nose, rolls from the corner of her busted lip, paints the split in her pointed ear.

Hunk starts trembling uncontrollably, his mind jumping from blankness to chaos. A typhoon of thoughts tangles through his head, leaving him breathless and babbling.

“Shiro— Is Shiro okay? He was— She was— He froze up! He was frozen like a statue, I think he had a flashback! She was about to blow his head off! Is, is he…?”

“He’s okay,” Keith says solemnly, patting his back. “He only got grazed and Allura’s taking care of him.”

“Thank god, I just…” Hunk’s arms fall to his sides. “I’m not fast, I didn’t know if I was fast enough. I was so scared and I— I…Did I kill her!?”

Panic submerges Hunk like ice water as he gapes at the general’s bloody and distorted face, broken under his hands.

“No,” Keith says slowly. “She’s just unconscious. Hunk, look at her chest.”

He moves his gaze to her chest, flitting over the Galra insignia on her armor. He pays attention and realizes that Keith’s right. It rises up and down rhythmically as she breathes.

“Oh,” he says, unable to get his own breath under control even in the wake of relief. “Oh, okay.”

“Let’s go back now,” Keith says, crouching beside Hunk and offering his hand.

Hunk nods quickly and takes his hand. Keith leads him over the unmoving form of the general and steers him in the direction of Matt’s ship.

“You alright?” Keith asks.

“I was really scared. When I tackled her, I didn’t look back because I thought—“ Hunk pauses, swallowing thickly, “I thought I was gonna see Shiro’s brains.”

Keith doesn’t speak but he doesn’t let go of Hunk’s hand, even when they’ve reached the ship.

* * *

“I can’t believe this!” Allura seethes at Hunk, jabbing her finger into his chest plate as she fixes him with a furious glare. “We’re paladins! We’re diplomats! Do you realize the kind of damage an incident like this could do to Voltron’s reputation? I wouldn’t even expect this kind of behavior from Keith, let alone you.”

Maybe it’s because he’s still a little tipsy or maybe it’s because he’s still a lot exhausted, but Hunk can’t find it in him to apologize no matter how distressed Allura truly seems. All he can do is roll his eyes.

“Really not that big of a deal, Allura.”

“You attacked a quiznaking civilian!” Allura snarls, stamping down.

“No, that’s not—“ Hunk breaks off, growling a frustrated noise. “I shoved a guy and he fell! Okay? You’re acting like I knocked him out.”

“He was defending me,” Shay says softly, coming forward with her head bowed. “I did not mean to cause any trouble.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Hunk promises quickly, annoyance morphing into guilt at the sad look on her face. “Those jerks shouldn’t have been making fun of you.”

They were having this coalition celebration thing at the space mall, which Hunk picked Shay up for. Some snooty aliens were openly making fun of her clumsy shuffling under bright lights she wasn’t used to. Hunk ignored it at first, but then Shay tripped down the escalator. She luckily wasn’t hurt, but she could’ve been, and they mocked her. Heckled her, laughing like lunatics as if it was some big joke.

Shay was visibly embarrassed and Hunk absolutely lost it. He got up in their faces, yelled a lot, and shoved the guy who seemed to be the ringleader of the merry band of assholes. Hunk hadn’t meant to push him to the ground, but he doesn’t exactly feel bad about it either.

Allura looks Shay over, her anger dialing down a notch. She takes a step back from Hunk and tents her fingers together.

“I realize you didn’t actually injure anyone but our public appearances are very important,” Allura says, her tone measured and stern. “For all we know, people may have recorded your outburst on their communicators. That isn’t the kind of publicity we want going around.”

“So I’m supposed to coddle jerks who mock my friends?” Hunk raises a brow.

“You know that’s not what I’m saying,” Allura chides. “We simply can’t lash out in public, I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

“So I shouldn’t have shoved the guy,” Hunk admits. “Fine. I’m still not gonna play nice with people who rip on Shay.”

“I am unhurt,” Shay says apprehensively, touching his shoulder. “I need to get used to settings like this and all those who may attend, even those who are unkind.”

Hunk relaxes somewhat. As long as Shay’s okay, there isn’t really a problem. It still pissed him off but if she can get over being the subject of the ridicule, than he can surely get over it too.

Allura’s gaze is still fixed on him, but her expression is more inquisitive than angry.

“Are you intoxicated?” she asks suddenly.

“No!”

Allura looks skeptical.

Hunk rubs his hand over his face. “I had one glass of the stuff we toasted with, just like _everybody else_ , and Sal treated me and Shay to one drink each. That’s it.”

The ones at Vrepit Sal’s had been pretty strong, but what’s the point in telling her that?

“Then I blame you and you alone for tonight’s poor judgement,” Allura warns carefully, turning on her heel and leaving to talk with some more leaders and possibly pacify anyone who might’ve seen his ‘outburst’ as she described it.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs to Shay. “I hoped you would have fun, I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this.”

“I am having fun,” Shay hums warmly, her tail perking up. “I may despise the escalator, but everything else is wonderful! Can we go see the fountain again?”

“Sure.” Her warmth is infections and Hunk perks up too.

* * *

Traitors set Hunk off unlike anything else.

Known enemies are one thing. The Empire is an oppressive regime and it will always have his rage. Since the Balmera he’s become wholeheartedly committed to bringing it down.

But there’s something so painfully personal about betrayal. Betrayal is this particularly slimy kind of evil hidden behind the pretense of a friend’s face. What kind of vile shit does someone have to be made of to be able to do that?

To invert themselves to win your trust and hook your heart with precise performances and deceit. To pretend they truly care by offering kind touches, warm words, to drive the knife into your back only when they hug you.

Hunk is always wary of traitors and suspicious of strangers’ seemingly innocent intentions.

The wrath he has for the Empire is easier for him to wrangle than the wrath he has for traitors. Discovering traitors is as terrifying as it is infuriating, to be forced to confront the fact that you were blinded and let your secrets spill to serpents. To realize an enemy has tucked away your vulnerabilities and added another vulnerability by fostering a friendship in you for prime exploitation.

His wrath for traitors is incomprehensible, born from fear just as much as fury. It’s as unpredictable as betrayal itself.

“Can I come in?” Pidge's voice echoes beyond the other side of the door.

“Do you want to?” Hunk asks uncertainly.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to, you goof.” The door slides open and Pidge walks in, forcing a smile.

Hunk tries to smile back but his face feels numb and his mouth won’t move the way he wants it too. It too, is out of his control and that thought just makes him all anxious.

“Okay, so we’re sitting on the floor now,” Pidge concludes, plopping down across from him. “Are you okay?”

“Is Matt okay?” Hunk returns.

Pidge crinkles her nose. “This whole 'you answering everything I ask you with another question' thing? We can sit on the floor, but we’re not gonna do that.”

“But _is_ he okay?” Hunk emphasizes, nervous.

“He’s going to have a hell of a headache when he wakes up, but Coran says there aren’t any long term effects. So yeah, he’s okay. Thanks to you.”

Pidge forces another smile and Hunk looks to the floor. They’d been on a mission with some of the rebel forces, led by another supposed rebel, Kolaphar. If that was even his real name. Turned out he was an mole. The alleged mission was an elaborate trap to separate the paladins. No one knows exactly how much info he’d had or how long he’d been feeding it to the Galra.

They can’t ask him now.

“Really, are you okay?” Pidge asks again, searching him with worried eyes.

“I blacked out. I remember realizing Kolaphar drugged Matt and throwing my drink, but not…not after.”

“What’s the next thing you remember?” Pidge asks softly.

“Dropping my bayard.” Hunk thinks of being assaulted by the strong, sickly sweet aroma of cooked meat and slaps his hand over his mouth.

Pidge gasps and rapidly crawls over to the trashcan by his bed. She shoves it into Hunk’s lap just in time, the contents of his stomach splashing the metallic bottom.

When he’s done, he’s shaking and Pidge pulls the trashcan away, replacing its presence in his lap with herself. Hunk stiffens, at a loss.

“It’s okay,” she says, nestling in and gently patting his bicep. “You’re okay, don’t be scared.”

“You’re not scared?” he asks warily.

“Of you?” Pidge snorts. “Please, Hunk. The only person I could possibly feel safer with is my mom.”

She’s always biased when it comes to her family. If he’d done what he did with a life on the line that wasn’t Matt’s, would she still want to comfort him?

Hunk thinks he knows the answer but he clings to her anyway.

* * *

“I worry about you sometimes,” Lance says cautiously, peeking up over his tablet.

“I worry about you too?” Hunk hesitates, confused and somewhat anxious about what he’s getting at. “I mean, we’re fighting all the time.”

“Not like that.” Lance puts the tablet down and rocks forward, folding one leg over the other. “I’m not talking about what might happen to you. Sure, obviously, I worry about that too, but I’m talking about _you._ I worry about you.”

“Worry like how?” Hunk nervously paces in a little sideways shuffle.

“Sit down, man.” Lance pats the spot on the couch next to him.

“I feel like I’m in trouble,” Hunk mutters, but he makes his way over and sits down anyway.

“Say what? Do I ever get you into trouble?” Lance teases lightly.

It helps put Hunk at ease even though he senses something serious in the footnotes; Lance’s posture and the solemn set of his features.

“Only all the time,” he huffs back.

Lance leans a little closer and pats his leg. “See, right now I feel like I know you but sometimes, especially lately, you seem different. Be honest with me, are you getting jaded to what we do?”

“If that’s what we’re talking about, then you’re different too.” Hunk gives him a knowing look. “We’re all different. I’m not jaded, Lance, I’m just…adjusted.”

“Hm. Okay, so you have a point.” Lance thoughtfully taps his foot against the floor.

“This is just how it is. We’re not gonna be the same when we go home.” Hunk stuffs his hands into his pockets so he doesn’t picture them stained with blood.

“Yeah, I know that. When it comes to you though, I dunno. Sometimes you surprise me,” Lance admits quietly.

He does not mean 'surprise' in a flattering way.

“So, what? I’ve disappointed you or something?” Hunk tenses.

“No, no, no.” Lance waves his hands. “I just think you freak yourself out over stuff that happens and I worry about what it does to you, that’s all. You know we can talk, right?”

“I know we can,” Hunk says uneasily, “but I don’t want to.”

“But maybe you should?” Lance tilts his head.

“Nah. You know me, I turn my problems into projects. The next time I kill somebody, we’re gonna be eating cake for a week.”

Lance balks.

“It was a joke.” Kind of.

“A bad one.” Lance makes a face. “Yeesh, now you see why I worry about you?”

“Hey, it’s not my sense of humor. I’m just borrowing it from Shiro.”

Lance smirks a bit at that and leans back, resting his hands on his knees. “So, good talk?”

“Good talk,” Hunk agrees.

It’s not a talk he wanted to have but if Lance feels more at ease, it definitely wasn’t pointless.


End file.
